DECEMBER I. 1915 



997 



GIVE US SOME LIGHT 



BY F. J. LEE 



A year aj;o my daughter had thirteen 

 colonies. When it came time io put the 

 bees in the cellar (concrete walls and floor) 

 for winter her husband wanted to darken 

 the windows; but this being' inconvenient, 

 lie took a half-depth super, bored a two- 

 inch hole through both sides, and tacked 

 some wire cloth over these holes, put it on 

 a bottom-board, and with a. piece of lath 

 stopi^ed the beeway entrance and set the 

 hive on this and put them in the cellar — 

 covers all on. 



1 was in the cellar several time.s during 

 the winter, and once in February I could 

 not detect a sound from them. I tapped 

 the side of a hive, and the bees at once 

 " telephoned " " We are all here." I could 

 tell the time on a watch every day without 

 artiticial light. 



About the first of April the bees began 

 to buzz and try to get out; then the win- 

 dows were darkened for a couple of weeks 

 before the hives were taken from the cellar. 



Every colony was alive and in fine order 

 — very few dead bees on the bottom-boards. 

 Just across the street I had six dead colo- 

 nies out of eighty-five in a perfectly dark 

 cellar. The young people have twenty hives 

 this fall ; and if they winter better than 

 mine this winter I will turn on the light. 



Lee Valley, Ont. 



[The plan described above is very similar 

 to the Hershiser method of wintering, de- 

 scribed in these columns a few years ago. 

 Mr. Hershiser, however, goes further, and 

 lias a much larger opening covered with 

 wire cloth below the hive. 



We tried the plan in our own cellar, but 

 with i-ather disastrous results. With the 

 bees in ideal condition, and the tempera- 

 ture and ventilation all that can be desired, 

 the plan gives good success; but if condi- 

 tions are not just exactly right the few bees 

 that begin buzzing around on the Avire cloth 

 trying to get out raise such an uproar that 

 the whole colony is likely to become un- 

 easy. Is it not better to allow any old un- 

 easy bees to get clear away from the hive 

 rather than to have them confined where 

 they can stir up the other bees? 



Our correspondent had 85 colonies in his 

 cellar, while the cellar described held only 

 13. Other things being equal, it is a more 

 difficult matter to maintain an even temper- 

 ature and quiet wintering when there are, 

 say, 85 colonies in a room than when there 

 are less than 20. Is it not probable that 

 the 13 colonies wintered successfully in 

 spite of the light and confinement rather 

 than because of these conditions? — Ed.] 



MY FIRST YEAR'S EXPERIENCE IN BEE CULTURE 



BY D. S. HUNT 



First I want to mention a few incidents 

 of my early childhood. When I was a small 

 boy my father was a keeper of bees, but he 

 kept them in box hives, and they were of 

 the hybrid strain. They were very vicious, 

 and possessed of an inclination to attack 

 and sting any object that came too near 

 them. It was hardly possible for me to 

 come within ten feet of their hive without 

 being chased away. During the severe win- 

 ter of 1894 father lost every colony that he 

 had with the exception of two or three, and 

 he became so discouraged over the loss of 

 the bees that he sold the remaining colonies 

 to a neighbor the following spring for $1.50 

 per colony. 



Now for my exjierience: 



Last !May I purchased a three-frame nu- 

 cleus and tested golden Italian queen. As 

 soon as they were placed in their new home 

 they immediately began to work very vigor- 

 ously, and up to July 15 they had increased 



so enormously in numbers that I decided I 

 would do some artificial swarming. This 

 was accomplished very nicely by placing 

 four frames of the best brood that the 

 mother hive contained in the newly made 

 hive, together with the mother queen, leav- 

 ing the original hive the duty of producing 

 them a queen. This they did in due course 

 of time. But a few days after I had divid- 

 ed my bees it began to rain, and kept it up 

 for about two weeks, slowing up brood- 

 rearing and honey-gathering. However, 

 both colonies succeeded in obtaining some 

 honey. In the meantime I placed a super 

 with comb foundation in frames on top of 

 the old colony, and they stored about fifteen 

 ])ounds of honey in the super. 



On August 28 I made an inspection of 

 the two colonies, and, to my astonishment, 

 found that there was no honey in either 

 colony. So I got busy and supplied them 

 with syrup made by dissolving granulated 



